Friday, May 10, 2013

Usher In My Room

By Chet
Williamson

“There's a world where I can go / And tell my secrets
to / In my room / In my room ….”

The above words
are the opening lines to an international rock ‘n’ roll anthem. It’s time we reclaim
one of its authors as our own. Though born in Los Angeles, he grew up here. He went to
grade school in Grafton and later graduated from a local high school.

His name
is Gary Lee Usher, a prolific songwriter who is widely recognized as an
architect of the surf music. Along with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Usher
co-authored the immortal “In My Room.”

According
to IMDb (Internet Movie Database), Usher was born on December
14, 1938,
and “grew up in New England. He attended Norcross Grammar School and graduated from WestboroughHigh School in Massachusetts in 1957.”

In high
school Usher was a well-liked and active student. He was called “Ush.” He liked
“convertibles, haircuts, cards, clothes, transmissions,” and his favorite
expression was “Oh, say now!”

Usher’s
activities were playing baseball, basketball, and in addition to writing for
the school paper, the Oriel, he worked
on the Yearbook, The Cotton Gin – named for another famous Westborough citizen,
Eli Whitney). Appropriately, his school epitaph read: “Race with the Devil.”

Usher's high school shot

Absolutely
nothing is said about music. In a 1964 article in the Worcester Telegram, writer James Lee pointed out that Usher “had no
interest in music in his school days. He had a talent for art and he spent much
of his time on that. He even taught it in the lower grades.”

The
headline to the story read: “Former Bank Teller Here Becomes a Top Songwriter.”
Lee opened his piece with the question: “Like to hear a success story?”
Answering the question, he stated, “The subject is Gary Usher, who resigned as
a teller at the Worcester Five Cents Saving Bank three years ago to go to Hollywood to write music. He’s now one of
the leading rock ‘n’ roll composers in the country – specializing in surfing
music – and his weekly income reaches four figures.”

Lee also
noted that between 1963 and ’64 Usher published more than 150 songs, 100 of
which had already been recorded. At the time, his songs were recorded on more
than 40 albums and he was under contract to Capitol records as both a writer
and a singer. Usher was also committed to writing music for American
International Pictures. As Lee duly noted, “Not bad for a 24 year-old who never
had any musical education,”

Lee
reported that Usher became interested in music in 1958, a year after
graduation, while stationed in Korea, “at a lonely outpost on a 2,000
foot mountain. Out of boredom, one day he walked 13 miles to a store, where he
bought a Japanese guitar, then sent for a booklet on how to play it. It took
him six months to learn. Then he started composing songs.”

Pvt. Gary Lee Usher

Returning
stateside, Usher was stationed at Ft.Devens. He told Lee that he purchased an
electric guitar, made some demonstration records, and began shopping his songs
around Boston. The results? “They were bad,” Usher admitted.

After his
discharge in 1960, Usher moved to Los Angeles, worked in a bank, and studied
art at El Camino College. “He received an associate art degree but was
discouraged when he realized the time it would take to get established in art,”
Lee said.

In 1961,
Usher returned to Westborough and for six months worked at the Worcester Five
Cents Savings Bank. “Yearning to get into the musical mainstream, he left for
Los Angeles late in 1961,” Lee wrote, adding, “There he filled some minor
entertainment jobs, attended college, wrote music, pitched for the San
Francisco Giants’ farm teams and worked at the City National Bank in Beverly Hills.”

Lee contends
that Usher’s big break came in June, 1962. As legend has it, while visiting his
uncle’s home in Hawthorne, CA. five unknown kids calling themselves
the Beach Boys were rehearsing across the street. “Gary got acquainted with them,” Lee
said. “He collaborated with one of them, Brian Wilson, in writing a song, ‘409,’
which was paired with ‘Surfin’ Safari’ for Capitol. Named after the Chevrolet
409, the tune sold a million and a quarter records in ’62.

In a 1971
interview with writer Gene Sculatti, Usher said, “I was a hot rod freak. I had
a 409. One day we were driving up to Los Angeles looking for a part for my car,
and I said 'Let's write a song called '409'. We'll do a thing 'giddy up, giddy
up,' meaning horses for horsepower,' just kidding around. We came back and put
it to three simple chords in five minutes, and it developed into a
million-dollar car craze.”

“That was
the turning point,” Lee said. “Within a month Gary figured in the writing of 40
songs. He quit his bank job that August and resigned from baseball in the fall.
The Beach Boys used many of the Usher/Wilson songs in 1962 and ’63 to skyrocket
them to No. 1 position among American vocal groups.

“Dick
Dale and the Del Tones similarly prospered on Gary’s compositions. In the film, Muscle Beach Party, Gary had a hand in writing six of the
tunes. His next film release is Girls on
the Beach. He not only wrote the music but he was commissioned to score the
picture, a seemingly impossible job for one unschooled in the technicalities of
music. However, he accomplished it. The film is scheduled for release in the
fall.”

Ironically,
the two biggest songwriters of the surf music craze, Usher and Wilson, knew very little about the
subject. "Dennis Wilson was the first Beach Boy to pick up on surfing,”
Usher told Sculatti, “He was aware of Dick Dale, the Pendleton jackets and that
whole shot. It just rubbed off. I never surfed"

According
to the Wikimedia Foundation, Usher said that the experience in writing “In My
Room,” found the two fledgling songwriters taking their craft more seriously. “Brian
and I came back to the house one night after playing ‘over-the-line’ (a
baseball game). I played bass and Brian was on organ. The song was written in
an hour …. Brian’s melody all the way. The sensitivity … the concept meant a
lot to him.

“When we
finished, it was late, after our midnight curfew. In fact, Murray, [the Wilson brothers’ father] came in a
couple of times and wanted me to leave. Anyway, we got Audree [the Wilsons’ mother], who was putting her
hair up before bed, and we played it for her. She said, ‘That’s the most
beautiful song you’ve ever written.’ Murray said, ‘Not bad, Usher, not bad,’
which was the nicest thing he ever said to me.”

Usher
also offered his comments on what the song meant to Wilson adding, “Brian was always saying
that his room was his whole world.” In the same article, Wilson seconds this opinion: “I had a
room, and I thought of it as my kingdom. And I wrote that song, very
definitely, that you’re not afraid when you’re in your room. It’s absolutely
true.”

In his
short, action-packed life, Usher also
worked with an amazing array of artists such as Glenn Campbell, Gene Clark,
Dick Dale, Wayne Newton, Annette Funicello, Gram Parsons, and Chad &
Jeremy, among countless others. He produced three albums for the Byrds,
“Bookends” for Simon and Garfunkel, and is responsible for discovering Firesign
Theatre.

Usher
owned his own record label (Together Records), produced hundreds of sessions,
and as IMBd stated he became a major figure on the surf-rock scene. He was involved as a producer and/or songwriter
with many surf/hot-rod groups of the period which include the Hondells, the
Competitors, the Quads, the Road Runners, the Super Stocks, the Four Speeds,
the Silly Surfers, and the Surfaris.”

In the
1970s, Usher took time off from the music scene only to return in 1984 to
record Sanctuary, and in ’86 collaborated
on a session with old friend Wilson -- although, as of this writing, only "Let's Go to Heaven in My Car" has ever
been released. On May 25, 1990, Usher died from cancer. He was 51.

For a complete picture of Usher see: The California Sound, an Insider's Story, the Musical Biography of Gary Usher by Stephen J. McParland

Gary Lee
Usher

DOB: December
14, 1938
(Los
Angeles)

DOD: May
25, 1990 (Los Angeles)

STANDARD

“In My
Room” by Usher and Brian Wilson

The Wikimedia
Foundation offers a few notable facts about “In My Room.” “It was released on
their 1963 album Surfer Girl. It was released as the B-side of the “Be True To
Your School” single. The single peaked at number six in the U.S. A remake by Usher’s own band, Sagittarius
peaked at eighty-six in 1969. “In My Room” remained on the Billboard Top 100 for 11 weeks, peaking at #23 in 1963.”

Continuing
its take on the tune, the Foundation also noted that, “David Crosby (of the
Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young),
admitted to being an admirer of the song, quoting, “’In My Room,’ was the
defining point for me. When I heard it, I thought, ‘I give up – I can’t do that
– I’ll never be able to do that.’”

In 2001, Crosby, along with Jimmy Webb and Carly
Simon, got to sing a version of “In My Room” on “An All Star Tribute to Brian
Wilson.”

The song
is heard in the animated film Happy Feet
and a cover of “In My Room” appears on the soundtrack to the TV series, “Friends.”